Enhancing dual activities in a social network

Résumé

In a variety of situations, an agent exerts two types of activities that are 'dual'. On an Internet forum for example, an individual can engage in two types of communication, by providing contributions on one hand and by watching the others' contributions and posting a rating, on the other. Most often there is a positive feedback between the two activities, meaning, for example, that an agent is more inclined to provide high quality contributions the more people pay attention to them and to read others' contributions the better their quality. The objective of this paper is two-fold: (1) to build a simple strategic game that exhibits this feedback and (2) to study the strategies of a manager who aims at increasing an aggregate of agents' activities. Two types of strategies that differentiate individuals by providing cash or modifying the visibility of their actions are analyzed. Each type is characterized by a different measure of the influence of the agents. Finally, the incentive of the manager to release information to the players on others' actions is studied.